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President Kennedy Predicted Our Times ...
I just read the article in Salon "Obama/Kennedy vs. McCain/Goldwater" by David Talbot.
I was struck by the following quotation of John F. Kennedy describing what would happen if we took the posture which President Bush does:
... Kennedy, in a September 1963 speech before a conservative Mormon audience in Salt Lake City: "We must realize that foreign policy in the modern world does not lend itself to easy, simple black and white solutions. If we were to have diplomatic relations only with those countries whose principles we approve of, we would have relations with very few countries in a very short time ... If we were to treat foreign policy merely as a medium for delivering self-righteous sermons to supposedly inferior people, we would give up all thought of world influence or world leadership."
I can't imagine a more apt description of the Bush Administration than treating "foreign policy as a medium for delivering self-righteous sermons ..." Our enemies list has grown rapidly because we've expressed disapproval of other nations principles - usually only because they differ from our stated principles.
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Comments (8)
Or how about this one, from a JFK speech at the University of Washington in Seattle on November 16, 1961:
"We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient---that we are only 6% of the world's population...that there cannot be an American solution to every world problem..."
May 21, 2008 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know President Kennedy was reading a speech written for him - he's not magical - but it is striking how clarity of thought brings out these inevitable conclusions.
May 21, 2008 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, well... his administration also did widen the conflict into Vietnam... bummer.
May 21, 2008 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorensen in his latest identifies Vietnam as the one foreign policy issue which JFK left in no better, and possibly worse, shape for his successor. His account of JFK and Vietnam seems a pretty balanced and forthright acknowledgement of the contradictory sensibilities his boss brought to his approach to this issue. Unlike some others (almost all of whom knew him far less well) who write with great certitude about what JFK would have done or was going to do about Vietnam, Sorensen says he does not know how Kennedy would have come down on this issue had he lived and served a second term.
May 21, 2008 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
LBJ kept on the same cabinet. LBJ had essentially no interest in foreign geo-politics. The Vietnam war widened as it did because of JFK's cabinet. Consequently, it's pretty clear where Vietnam was going had JFK not been assassinated. In fact, it's the people saying that JFK would pull out who have had to work hard to maintain that point of view.
Sorensen is also widely known as a JFK apologist and kept the Profiles in Courage authorship in the dark for nearly his entire life -- even though folks had already exposed that JFK wrote little of it.
He's a smart guy, but few take him seriously when it comes to the Kennedy's as he has always been too much of a cheerleader.
May 21, 2008 5:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Plenty of pride and puffery in his latest as one would expect. But also some narrative and observations that don't fit the neat "too much of a cheerleader" label you are attaching to him.
JFK did in fact resist concerted pressure and frequent requests to send combat troops into Vietnam. Among his closest advisors were some who wanted to send combat troops in but also some who did not want him to do that. In any case it would have been JFK's decision to escalate or not, not his Cabinet's. Just as it was LBJ's decisions to make, not his Cabinet's. Unless I am missing something here. Not saying he would not have escalated, but I am questioning the seeming certitude of those who say he would have.
May 21, 2008 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
The article I linked to was about the debates Kennedy and Goldwater planned. Kennedy was shaping a plan to get the US out of Vietnam and the '64 campaign was to feature that plan.
May 22, 2008 2:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
My understanding is that he was wrestling with how he might do this after the election.
Goldwater was vulnerable to charges of extremism on national security issues. A smart politician like Kennedy would, I suspect but do not know, have sought to isolate Goldwater in that way, much as LBJ subsequently did, rather than open himself up to charges of being "soft on Communism" by seeking to make a campaign issue out of withdrawal of advisors from Vietnam. That latter approach would have been a very dicey gambit as public opinion at that time might well have not favored Kennedy over Goldwater on such a proposal.
May 22, 2008 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
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